Checkmate!
Remember those six guys rounded up by a cadre of Kevlar-armored cops back in November — for playing chess in an Inwood playground unaccompanied by a child?
It turns out their summonses cited the wrong section of the Parks Department code, a technicality that led a Manhattan judge today to toss out the tickets for two of the men.
“Our prayers have been answered!” Yacahudah[cq] Harrison, 49, said as he left Manhattan Criminal Court with fellow former chess outlaw Christopher Peralta, 29, both cleared of their charges.
Harrison headed right back to Emerson Playground’s concrete, checkerboard-inlaid chess tables with his plastic rooks, knights and pawns to play some more
“This isn’t anything dangerous or malicious,” Harrison — a homeless man who lives in a nearby A-train station — said today as he started winning his first game. “It’s chess.”
Harrison and the five other men had erroneously been cited under Park Rules and Regulations subsection 1-03-a3, which makes it a violation to be in a park or playground when it’s closed to the public — as in after dark.
But the bishop-slinging sextet had been playing at 2 in the afternoon when the cops swooped in on them, said their lawyer, civil liberties activist Norman Siegel.
What cops meant to cite them with, Siegel told the judge today, was 1-03-c2, which orders park-goers to obey all signs unless a cop or park employee allows otherwise. Even in this instance, though, the six men were insisting that park rangers had told them it was alright to play at the designated chess tables, Siegel said.
“The judge said he had no other choice,” Siegel said. Of the remaining four players, one has failed to return to court and three have already taken deals in which the charges will be dismissed in six months providing they aren’t rearrested.
The men’s arrests led to angry letters to the mayor by neighbors and chess fans. The men had faced up to 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.